{"id":152,"date":"2012-09-08T16:35:45","date_gmt":"2012-09-08T21:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/autofish.net\/web_log\/?p=152"},"modified":"2012-09-11T23:28:51","modified_gmt":"2012-09-12T04:28:51","slug":"ico-and-fumito-ueda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autofish.net\/web_log\/archives\/152","title":{"rendered":"ICO and Fumito Ueda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ICO is a video game that delivers an experience unmatched by any other game that I&#8217;ve come across before or since. It was designed and directed by Fumito Ueda, whose team went on to also create Shadow of the Colossus.<\/p>\n<p>Ueda&#8217;s design philosophy is evident in his work:<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"spquote\">I was attracted, not by the idea of playing within a well-constructed set of rules, but by the idea of playing, experiencing, and adventuring within a real world. As a child, what appealed to me more than &#8220;the fun of playing games&#8221; was the emotion conveyed by the works I experienced, and the way these works brought their worlds to life.<\/span><sup>1<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>In creating ICO, Ueda was inspired by Eric Chahi&#8217;s Another World (also known as Out of This World and Outer World), as well as by the work of Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico.<\/p>\n<p>Ueda himself painted the cover art for ICO:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/autofish.net\/images\/web_log\/0152_ico_cover_600.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As is often the case with Japanese video games, the North American release had different cover art that was egregiously inferior. I won&#8217;t bother including a picture. What I&#8217;ll instead include for comparison is &#8220;Mystery and Melancholy of a Street&#8221; by Giorgio de Chirico:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/autofish.net\/images\/web_log\/0152_chirico_melancholy.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>ICO and Shadow of the Colossus were originally released for Playstation 2, but they have also been graphically enhanced and released together for PS3 as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-Shadow-Colossus-Collection-Playstation-3\/dp\/B002I0J5FG\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1347138938&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">The ICO and Shadow of the Colossus Collection<\/a>. It&#8217;s a high-quality re-release.<\/p>\n<p>Others at Sony in Japan expanded on Ueda&#8217;s original cover art for ICO to create this image, which is used in the title screen for The ICO and Shadow of the Colossus Collection (click to enlarge):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/autofish.net\/images\/web_log\/0152_ico_sotc_full.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border-color: #303030\" src=\"http:\/\/autofish.net\/images\/web_log\/0152_ico_sotc_full.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I bought a PS3 myself in late 2011 in anticipation of the impending release of Team ICO&#8217;s third game, The Last Guardian. There seem to have been a lot of problems with the development of that game, but I still hope to see it eventually. Fortunately, other games (such as Demon&#8217;s Souls and Dark Souls) make the PS3 worth owning in the meantime.<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/articles\/games-that-define-developers\" target=\"_blank\">an interview for Eurogamer.net<\/a>, Peter Molyneux (creator of Populous and other games) described ICO as follows:<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"spquote\">Mystery was part of its mechanic, it didn&#8217;t have real power-ups or anything. It was genius and it still remains a work of genius.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"spquote\">If I made something like ICO, I&#8217;d be very happy to die.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"dline\"><\/div>\n<p><sup>1<\/sup> I don&#8217;t know the source of this quote. if you do, please let me know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ICO is a video game that delivers an experience unmatched by any other game that I&#8217;ve come across before or since. It was designed and directed by Fumito Ueda, whose team went on to also create Shadow of the Colossus. Ueda&#8217;s design philosophy is evident in his work: I was attracted, not by the idea [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,11],"tags":[16,15,4,17,18],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2HXOd-2s","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/autofish.net\/web_log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/autofish.net\/web_log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/autofish.net\/web_log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autofish.net\/web_log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autofish.net\/web_log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":55,"href":"http:\/\/autofish.net\/web_log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":293,"href":"http:\/\/autofish.net\/web_log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/autofish.net\/web_log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autofish.net\/web_log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/autofish.net\/web_log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}